Relief and Regrets
by Proton Star
Summary: After everything, all the demons and the vampires, it was Giles's books that nearly killed him, when he was sorting out his library back in Oxford. It's when he recovers that things get awkward.


Title: Relief and Regrets  
Author: Proton Star  
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters; Fox/Mutant Enemy/Joss Whedon do. No money is being made from this.  
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer  
Characters: Giles, the Scoobies and Ethan Rayne.

Ratings/Warnings: PG-12, spoilers for everything up to the end of season 7, with mentions of canonical character deaths.  
Notes: Set after the show, but not compatible with the comics. Originally written to a lgbtfest 2009 prompt but, over time, it wandered significantly off-prompt. The original prompt was - Buffy the vampire slayer, Giles, and ensemble, Post-finale; Giles is injured while in England and Ethan Rayne is called as his next of kin. The fall-out from coming-out under difficult circumstances.

Summary: After everything, all the demons and the vampires, it was Giles's books that nearly killed him, when he was sorting out his library back in Oxford. It's when he recovers that things get awkward.

* * *

After everything, all the demons and the vampires, it was Giles's books that nearly killed him, when he was sorting out his library back in Oxford. He leant too far back reaching for a book and fell off his ladder.

The broken skull rendered him unconscious and the doctors wanted to keep him that way until they were sure the swelling had gone down. Or at least that's what Buffy, Willow and Xander had to assume because the hospital wouldn't tell them anything. They knew it wasn't the nurse's fault, and she was doing her best.

"I'd tell you if I could but you're not his emergency contact so I can't. I'm sure when he arrives they can sort all this out." She let them wait in the waiting area nearest the ICU, which was a kindness. Of course, the nurse couldn't tell them who the emergency contact was, for "data protection reasons". Mostly they hoped it wasn't any of the old Watcher's Council, otherwise they could be waiting here for a while. Willow thought it might have been someone in the Devon coven, except that wouldn't fit with what the nurse told them because everyone in the coven was a woman.

So they waited.

And waited.

It was practically the next day when the emergency contact showed up, so late that Xander had drifted off to sleep. Buffy kicked him in the leg to wake him as Willow grabbed her by the arm.

They couldn't stop Ethan; he got whisked through by the staff nurse followed closely by a doctor.

There was nothing they could do. Willow held Buffy back; she knew that if Buffy could, she would have launched herself at Ethan, through the nurse and the doctor if necessary, because they were all so worried about what Ethan would do to Giles. They had to hope he wouldn't do anything with other people there, but Ethan had magic and illusion on his side, so there was no telling if the nurse and the doctor would even notice anything that Ethan was doing to Giles.

It was a long quarter of an hour before the nurse came out to them again. "Mr. Rayne said that you could come in."

Fitting into the room was a squeeze, with all the machines that were keeping Giles alive, the three of them and Ethan.

There was a tense silence until the nurse left. There were a couple of moments where it looked like someone might say something but their voices were stayed because Giles was on the bed in front of them in a coma. It wasn't a time for arguments.

The nurse came back with a doctor, who explained what was going on. Buffy thought that, after what happened to her mother, she wouldn't have the same sort of shock-induced fade of her hearing and she'd be able to comprehend what the doctor said, but no, it was happening again. She got herself together enough to understand that Giles had been put into an induced coma, until the swelling on his brain reduced. Obviously, the doctor said, because it was a complicated medical procedure there were risks attached but they were hoping for a complete recovery.

The doctor explained the visiting hours, and said he understood that they might wish to stay but that it was outside visiting hours. There was very little they could do in the face of bureaucratic stone-walling so they slowly drifted out.

It was only six hours later that visiting hours actually began and Buffy took the first shift of watching over Giles. The others were folding over at the knees with tiredness but Buffy was okay, she thought it was slayer powers ... and shock. Because Giles had got out of Sunnydale mostly unscathed, and then he got this badly injured in his own library. On top of that, there was Ethan Rayne, whose appearances were never a good sign.

Admittedly he wasn't doing anything to Giles right now; instead he was solving the newspaper crossword. But Buffy wasn't going to lower her guard. Staying awake was the difficult thing, because even though the hospital chairs weren't all that nice, it was still a lot more comfortable than graveyard stakeouts.

Rayne didn't say anything to her, didn't even glance at her when he finished the crossword and switched to reading a book.

It was a long four hours.

The nurse came round telling them visiting hours were over, and that was when Rayne finally said something. "You could have slept, you know. There's no fun in tormenting Rupert when he can't fight back." But then again, Rayne was a liar, or at least he didn't give you the whole truth, and hid the important things when he said anything.

Willow snuck in slightly early for visiting hours the next day, and was putting up wards when Ethan came in. He looked at them askance. Willow had got a lot better at speaking to people when she was defending her actions but she still stammered her way through the sentence. "There was a demon once. Buffy was ill and there was a demon who prayed on the sick. I didn't want anything like that to happen to Giles." She thought quickly. "It's ... you're not a demon or anything like that right now, right? I can change the spell so you can come in." They didn't know how he'd gotten out of the Initiative's holding pen, but they did know that Ethan was a powerful magician who would stop at nothing to get his way so they couldn't rule out him having given his body to a demon and then using that demon's power to escape.

Ethan's answer of "nothing quite like that, no", wasn't exactly reassuring. Especially not his tone.

Still, Willow had a job to finish, so she turned around and carried on with her spellwork. She looked behind her every now and again to keep an eye on what was going on, because she was here to make sure Giles was safe. She could hear Ethan talking to Giles, reading to him from the newspaper. He stopped every time she turned around. Once, Ethan must have been caught up in what he was reading and didn't notice her turning round, and she saw Ethan holding Giles's hand.

She went bright red and turned back around. But it left her with a quandary. If Ethan Rayne had been anyone else, she would have left them alone, because everyone deserved privacy, and she knew Giles would have wanted that if he'd been awake. But Ethan Rayne was Ethan Rayne, who couldn't be trusted not to take advantage of situations, see the Halloween outfits, the candy bars and turning Giles into a Fyarl demon, so she couldn't leave them alone.

Willow had brought a book with her and sat down reading it, trying to give them what space she could, but still looked up occasionally, just to make sure nothing bad was happening to Giles.

Ethan noticed her looking during one of her glances. His recoil was instinctive, and he did what he always did when he felt uncomfortable, he went on the attack.

"There's one thing I don't understand. What makes you special? What makes you redeemable? I was bad, I don't deny it, but I didn't nearly destroy the world." Willow looked at him, shocked. "I was out of action, not out of the loop. Do you really think I wouldn't have noticed that level of magical activity?"

Willow had no idea what to say. She turned pink and looked back down at her book. Because she didn't know why Giles, or anyone else, thought she was worth saving. What she'd done was inexcusable, and she would have understood it if no one wanted anything to with her ever again, but Giles had saved her. He didn't try to pretend that she hadn't done the things she had done, no, remembering what could happen if she lost control was vital, but he saved her future. And she didn't know why he'd do that for her and not for someone, that, well she didn't know what Ethan had been or was to Giles, but he seemed to be someone important to Giles. She would have thought that if Giles could have done something to help him in the same way, he would have done.

The embarrassed silence lasted for the rest of visiting hours.

Xander was already there the next morning when Ethan arrived.

"I know I said I wouldn't do anything, but I'm offended that they've sent you." Xander ignored him, that barely counted as an insult compared to the things other people, people he actually gave a damn about, had said. Apparently, living with Spike had some advantages because he'd become a king at tuning people out.

"Yeah, well, here I am." Willow had told him to bring a book, because it was going to be boring. None of them had actually expected Ethan to keep his word, but he seemed to have been behaving. Of course, he could have been lulling them into a false sense of security. Xander wouldn't put it past him. There wasn't much he though Ethan wouldn't do. Plus, Willow had been twitchy and wouldn't say why, which made Xander think Ethan had been doing something he shouldn't have been doing, but not anything bad enough for Willow to bother them about it.

It was during Xander's watch that Giles started to come round, making his way out of the chemically-induced coma.

Xander went to call Buffy and Willow, having to trust that Ethan wouldn't do anything bad to Giles while he was away, which Xander kind of did, but he still made it a really quick call.

By the time Buffy and Willow arrived, Xander and Ethan had been moved out of the room because the doctors needed space to do their thing. Buffy was glad to be here anyway, even if she felt useless because there was nothing she could do to help.

Visiting hours were over before the doctors finished whatever they were doing, so they all went back to the hotel, worried but hopeful, after making sure that Ethan had also left, because that was all they could do to keep Giles safe at this point.

Giles was awake and lucid, even if didn't say a lot because he had a sore throat from the intubation, when they came to visit him the next day. They were all so relieved to see him alive and conscious again.

Giles was happy to see them too, if a little worried that all he could see of Ethan was him furiously scribbling on something. Giles doubted it was spellwork, he couldn't feel the peculiar taste that magic brought. At least he hoped it was that, not that something had been irreparably damaged. He tried to set aside the panic that caused. He was alive, he could work on everything else later.

Ethan finished what he was doing, and handed Giles a form to change his medical next-of-kin. All Giles would need to do was sign it.

Giles gave it back to him unchanged. "I need someone who'll turn the machine off if it comes to that." Because Buffy, Willow and Xander wouldn't, they'd fight to the bitter end against unbeatable odds, and he couldn't be prouder of them for it, but some fights could not be won and he'd rather not be an extended battleground.

Giles could trust Ethan to do that for him. He'd let Giles die rather than let him linger, even if it was just to get his hands on Giles's body for spell ingredients. Giles had planned for that, and had left a few interesting codicils in his will, the magical one, not the paper one, to take care of the problem.

Ethan's reaction was a picture, not quite angry and amused despite that, surprised, chagrined, and the most fleeting look of something like hope that Ethan would never have wanted Giles to see, so Giles ignored it. He had to hope that other people would do the same for him. From the way Willow was refusing to meet his gaze, Giles presumed that either he'd said something he shouldn't have when he was coming round, or that Ethan, thinking that Giles would never know, may have been indiscreetly affectionate. He wondered if Willow's bashfulness would allow her to ask him about it, if she saw anything. Mostly he hoped she wouldn't, because he's not sure how to respond. Not yet. He's not sure if he ever will be. Because the question won't be about keeping his secret, or the important part of the question won't be, because Willow was clever enough to know that times and mores change, and because she valued personal privacy almost as much as he did. Her question would be something more difficult, about who deserved second chances and how you decide. It would have been easier if she were upset about Giles's silence on the other matter.

He hadn't meant to keep it a secret, not really, not once he'd stopped being their librarian, not once they'd grown into the wonderful adults he knew now. But it had been easier not to say anything, and for once, Giles wanted an easy life.

There hadn't been anybody, at all, for a long time after Ethan. Giles had lived a life of monastic solitude, trying to make up for what he done, and trying to prove he was worthy of his second chance and of the responsibility of being a Watcher. It was a sort of self-inflicted punishment, he had to sacrifice something, to make up for the second chance he'd been given. He doesn't think the Watchers Council expected a vow of chastity, with regard to either gender, but he hadn't felt worthy of someone's love, not for a long while after. He wasn't trying to keep some flame alive either, Giles had already been too old to believe in first and only loves, and Ethan wouldn't have been either anyway. No, it was a form of penance.

Giles, contrite and respectable by then, was as surprised as anyone when Merrick announced that he'd found the Slayer and demanded that Giles be the one to replace him if anything happened. Now, he suspects that Merrick understood Buffy and her situation better than anyone else in the Council could have done. Merrick was an outcast like Giles, he'd never done anything as bad as Giles had, but he'd never come back into the fold the way Giles had. That was why Merrick was in California, the Council thought that it was more likely the new Slayer would be activated by the strength of Cleveland Hellmouth than the relatively weaker one in Sunnydale. That showed how much they knew.

Merrick would have said he'd had a fine life, because he never saw his Slayer die, but Giles thinks he's had the better of it, because he's seen her live. He is prouder of Buffy, and the rest of them, than he ever had been of anything he'd done.

Once he moved to Sunnydale, he felt a greater freedom, one that Buffy and her zest for life encouraged, and there'd been Jenny. Wonderful Jenny, who'd been as trapped by her past as he was his, but in a completely different way.

And Olivia, who'd been far too sensible to stay with him once she realised just how odd his life sometimes got, and then he'd spent a lot of time with Joyce and people made assumptions because of that, assumptions that it was easier not to correct, as long as they didn't involve Buffy, because ... above everything else, it was no-one else's business. He didn't think he was unnaturally reserved, merely that there were things that were other people's business and things that were his business alone, and even once he was the manager of the Magic Box, things that were his alone outnumbered the things that were anyone else's.

But maybe he should have said something. Probably should have said something. It might have made Willow's life easier, not that Mrs. Rosenberg had a problem with Willow's sexuality, she merely treated it with the same blind indifference as she'd treated everything else about her daughter. But a sympathetic adult might have helped. At the time he'd been too caught up with trying to keep his Slayer, or rather keep his place in Buffy's life, to be any use. It was not his most shining hour.

Being there for Willow at the start wouldn't have stopped what came later. Willow did the terrible, horrible, near-Earth-shattering things that she'd done out of a grief that nothing would have altered. Ethan had never done anything nearly as bad, he'd done lots of smaller bad things, but nothing on that scale. And he never would, a dead world would be no fun to torment. In there was the question, if Willow hadn't been stopped, what she would have done was worse than anything Ethan had done, but Giles had held his hand out to her where he hadn't to Ethan. At the time, Giles was trying to save himself, save his soul and his place in the world, and hadn't been able to reach out. Wouldn't have done, because he thought his own salvation would have been threatened by it, because Ethan was the one who'd led him down the primrose path the first time. Later, he'd kept Ethan cut out of his life in case anyone found out. And then after, once he might have been capable and people knew, Giles understood something; the truth of it was, no matter how Giles felt, Willow could be saved because she'd wanted to be, even if Xander had done all the hard work, but Ethan couldn't be. It wasn't that Ethan didn't know that what he was doing was wrong, or that he didn't care, Ethan cared very much about the wrong he was doing. It had to be a certain kind, a style, a type. And it was his choice. Any attempt at reaching out would be met with ridicule at best; another incident like the one where Giles was turned into a Fyarl demon at worst.

That's the answer to the question that Willow might never ask, the difference is that Willow wanted to repent and Ethan, Ethan never will. Ethan with his amused smile, and his mock-cheerful laugh as he said, "have it your way," and pitched the revised medical contact form in the bin before walking out of the door. That smile might as well have been a mask, or maybe it was Ethan's real face, or maybe it was both and neither at the same time, and either way, any regret Ethan has is hidden by it, so Giles will regret the situation for the both of them. He doesn't know where Ethan's going, and would never dream of asking, but Giles is here, surrounded by his family, and Ethan isn't but could have been, and he'll never know what he's missing.

End notes: All descriptions of being in a medically-induced coma come from a friend and may not be applicable to everybody. I feel I should add that she is fine now.

Extra end notes: It had basically gone completely off prompt anyway, and then a friend made me their emergency medical contact when we are not related or having relations and I realised that, yeah, that aspect of the prompt, or that aspect of what the prompt was hinting at, just never worked. So I tweaked it and this was the result.


End file.
